Perennial, 20-65 cm. high, usually glaucous, densely caespitose. Culms erect or ascending, slender, simple or branched from the lower nodes, somewhat wiry, distinctly compressed, especially below, usually glabrous, sometimes slightly scaberulous, 3-4-noded; nodes glabrous, smooth. Leaf-sheaths more or less keeled, tight or lax, glabrous or somewhat scaberulous. Ligule densely short-ciliolate; auricles usually long-barbate; collar laterally barbate, more or less glabrous on the back. Leaf-laminae up to 10(20) cm. long, narrowly linear, conduplicate or convolute, fairly rigid, curved or flexuous, with a rather obtuse apex, with somewhat thickened marginal nerves, scabrous or hispidulous above, glabrous and smooth beneath. Panicle variable in shape and size, usually 15 x 5-10 cm., open, ovate to oblong, with several more or less spreading branches having spikelets congested towards the ends, forming often false spikes; axis erect or flexuous, terete, glabrous, smooth below, more or less subangular, scaberulous in the upper part; branches solitary or 2-nate, distant, scaberulous, naked for 1-6 cm. in the lower part. Spikelets greenish, usually tinged with purple. Glumes keeled, subhyaline, 1-nerved; the inferior usually 5-5.5 mm. long, lanceolate, scaberulous on the keel and laterally towards the apex, usually gradually tapering into a short awn c. 0.8-2 mm. long; the superior c. 6.5-8 mm. long, narrowly lanceolate, usually smooth on the keel, awned or deeply 2-fid at the apex with a c. 1 mm. long awn from the sinus and sometimes with well-developed narrow lateral lobes. Lemma 3.5-4.5 mm. long, sometimes mottled with purple, glabrous below, scabrous towards the apex; callus c. 1 mm. long, usually subacute, densely barbate; column of the awns c. 2.5 mm. long, twisted, scaberulous; awns 11-25 mm. long, subequal or the central one somewhat longer up to 30 mm., slender, scaberulous, more or less spreading; articulation between the apex of the column and the base of the awns.
